Script that creates self extracting executable script from tar.gz file.

selftar.sh

#!/bin/sh


if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
        echo "This script creates self extractable executable"
        echo Usage: $0 TAR.GZ [COMMAND]
        exit;
fi
if [ $# -gt 0 ]; then
        TAR_FILE=$1
fi
EXIT_COMMAND=exit
if [ $# -gt 1 ]; then
        EXIT_COMMAND="exec $2"
fi

SELF_EXTRACTABLE="$TAR_FILE.self"

echo '#!/bin/sh' > $SELF_EXTRACTABLE
echo 'dd bs=1 skip=`head -3 $0 | wc -c`  if=$0  | gunzip -c  | tar -x' >> $SELF_EXTRACTABLE
echo "$EXIT_COMMAND" >> $SELF_EXTRACTABLE

cat $TAR_FILE >> $SELF_EXTRACTABLE
chmod a+x $SELF_EXTRACTABLE

Script that creates self extractable executable from tar.gz file.
The result can be executed directly and extracts content of give tar.gz to current directory.
Script arguments: (mandatory) tar.gz file path and (optional) command that will be executed right after extracting the tar.gz content.

The name of resulting executable is as name of tar.gz with suffix ".self"

Usage:
Create self-extracted executable: ./selftar.sh my.tar.gz
Create self-extracted executable: ./selftar.sh my.tar.gz "folder/install.sh"

Both examples create file my.tar.gz.self

Blog post that explains the script.
http://alexradzin.blogspot.co.il/2015/12/creating-self-extracting-targz.html

Thanks Alex, works very well.

change this line:

echo 'dd bs=1 skip=`head -3 $0 | wc -c`  if=$0  | gunzip -c  | tar -x' >> $SELF_EXTRACTABLE

to:

echo 'dd status=none bs=`head -3 $0 | wc -c` skip=1 if=$0  | gunzip -c  | tar -x' >> $SELF_EXTRACTABLE

and it will be 10 times faster :D

change this line:

echo 'dd bs=1 skip=`head -3 $0 | wc -c`  if=$0  | gunzip -c  | tar -x' >> $SELF_EXTRACTABLE

to:

echo 'dd status=none bs=`head -3 $0 | wc -c` skip=1 if=$0  | gunzip -c  | tar -x' >> $SELF_EXTRACTABLE

and it will be 10 times faster :D

Could you explain why this makes it faster?